-Economic and Political Weekly Understanding the extent of financial inclusion of rural labour households is important since in the intercensal period 2001-11, the proportion of agricultural labourers in the workforce increased by 3.5 percentage points. This paper examines progress in financial inclusion using information on indebtedness of rural labour households collected by the National Sample Survey Office as part of the surveys of employment and unemployment conducted in 2004-05 and 2009-10....
More »SEARCH RESULT
Defending people's milk in India
-Grain.org "We take care of the cow and the cow takes care of us," says Marayal, a farmer in Thalavady, Tamil Nadu. Her two cows produce 6 to 10 litres of milk a day, which she sells for 30-40 cents per litre. Across India, there are millions of backyard dairy farmers like Marayal. Each owning just one or two cows, these farmers supply millions more families and hundreds of thousands of informal...
More »Unkept promise -TK Rajalakshmi
-Frontline The tussle within some Central government Ministries over proposed cuts in the budget for rural development schemes has affected a promise made to senior citizens. THEIR wizened faces said it all. Though there was disappointment, there was also a glimmer of hope that their trek to the national capital would not go in vain. For almost a month, senior citizens, most of them poor, had been pouring into New Delhi from...
More »Sustainability and food security -Nilanjan Ghosh
-The Hindu Business Line The South Asian population has been growing at the rate of 1.5 per cent per annum, and agricultural production at 2.5 per cent per annum has been keeping pace with the demographic trends, thereby creating the necessary provision for food. Yet, the inherent problems of distribution have loomed large for South Asia. India's National Food Security Act, 2013, emphasises defining certain target groups and highlights the importance...
More »Paradox of Poverty amid Plenty -Jaswant Kaur
-The New Indian Express Most people would have been shocked to read the year-end report that India has been ranked 63rd, much below countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, on the Global Hunger Index (GHI), a yardstick used by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) to comprehensively measure global hunger. The index is calculated as an average of three indices-undernourishment, underweight children and low child mortality rate-and is measured on a...
More »